


My Boy Builds Coffins

by sibley (ferns)



Series: Heartlines [7]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Childhood Trauma, Disability, Dissociation, Found Family, Gen, Implied Relationships, Platonic Love, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-23 19:59:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12515392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Joe and Barry, then and now.





	My Boy Builds Coffins

**Author's Note:**

> I promised myself I'd finally bring in Joe because holy hell do I love him.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay,” Joe hums, pressing Barry against his chest. “You’re safe, son. You’re safe. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

“I know nobody’s going to hurt me,” Barry growls, shoulders shaking with huge sobs. _“You_ think my Dad hurt me and you’re _wrong._ I know nobody’s going to hurt me. ‘Cept maybe _you.”_

Joe sighs and smoothes down Barry’s hair. “If you’re not scared, why are you crying?” He asks gently. “It’s not shameful to be scared, Barry. Or to want to be safe.”

He’ll leave the Henry thing, at least for now. Barry won’t and they both know it. He’s been insisting his dad didn’t kill his mom every day since that night, and Joe doesn’t know how to tell him that nobody is going to believe him. And no matter how much _Joe_ really does _want_ to believe him, he can’t.

Henry Allen killed his wife, and it was a stroke of luck that he hadn’t killed his son, too.

“I’m scared of the dark and of the man in the lightning who killed my Mom,” Barry yells, though it’s very muffled by Joe’s chest. “And I’m scared of _you_ ‘cause you think my Dad did bad things and he _didn’t_ he’s not a bad person he loves me and my Mom and he wouldn’t ever hurt her and you got the wrong person please. Please.”

Joe swallows. He hadn’t wanted to tell Barry this. Knew that he would eventually find out, but… “Son, your father confessed last night to killing your mother.”

Barry goes stock still. “Wh-what?”

“He confessed last night, Barry. I know you wanted to believe he was innocent, and I didn’t want to tell you, but he confessed to killing her.” Joe can feel his trembling go stronger. “That doesn’t mean you can’t be a good person. Just because your father did a very bad thing doesn’t mean that he passed wanting to do bad things like that on to you, okay?”

“You’re _lying,”_ Barry screams. Joe winces. “You’re _lying_ about him. He didn’t do it, he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it so he wouldn’t confess because he _didn’t do it!”_ _  
_

“Dad?” Iris asks sleepily from the doorway, rubbing her eyes. “What’s going on? S’loud…”

“Barry had a nightmare-” Joe starts to say, but Barry cuts him off.

“I had a nightmare and now Joe’s _lying_ to me. He’s _lying!”_ Barry yells. “He’s lying and he says that my Dad confessed to killing my Mom and he _didn’t confess_ I _know_ he didn’t confess because he didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Iris, go back to bed,” Joe says firmly. “I’ll come in there and tuck you in again later.”

Iris hesitates, eyes flickering back and forth between Joe’s stern face and Barry’s angry tears before she slowly backs out of the room, chewing on her lip. This isn’t something she can get involved in. _Barry_ shouldn’t even be involved in it. What child talks about murder every day?

“My Dad didn’t do those things,” Barry sobs. He weakly hits at Joe’s chest and upper arms, like if he fights back physically then that will fight off the truth of Henry’s actions. “He _didn’t,_ he didn’t, I swear he didn’t, my Dad would never do that, he loves me and Mom so much, you don’t… You don’t _understand,_ he wouldn’t… He wouldn’t… He’d never confess because he didn’t do those things.”

Joe rocks him gently. This isn’t new. Knowing Barry, he’ll probably angrily cry himself to sleep in Joe’s arms. Sometimes he has other nightmares. Sometimes he doesn’t. “I’m sorry, Barry. I wasn’t going to tell you until tomorrow.”

“You hate my Dad. You think they should kill him,” Barry sniffles. “You think he was hurting me before Mom died. Hurting both of us. You’re _wrong.”_

“I don’t think that he should die.” It’s the truth, but Joe doesn’t touch on Barry’s belief that he hates Henry. Honestly, Joe’s not sure if he does. It was hard to reconcile the smiling man who bought Barry and Iris ice cream and was public about how much he loved his wife and son with Barry’s tearstained face and Nora’s bloody corpse on the floor. As for previous abuse… If Henry had been abusing Barry and Nora then-then Joe should have _seen it,_ should have noticed _something._ Hidden bruises or flinching.

Sometimes men like Henry snapped out of nowhere. But there should have been signs. Signs that Joe should have been able to pick up on.

“But you hate him,” Barry insists. He’s still crying, but now there’s hiccuping mixed in. “You hate him and you think he hurt me and made me like him so you’re letting me live here so I’ll turn out _good_ and not like my Dad.”

“I think you’re a good person, Barry. A very good person. No matter who your Dad is. Okay?” Joe folded over to kiss the top of Barry’s head. “You’re a good person. And you can’t let someone take that away from you. Not ever.”

* * *

“Hold me?” Barry whispers, face burning. His tears have stopped falling, but they’ve left marks going down his face. “Please?"

“Of course, Bar.” Joe pulls him into a tight hug. They’re on the floor of STAR Labs, Barry’s frantic writing covering the walls around them. “Bad episode?”

“Really bad,” Barry chokes out. “I couldn’t-I couldn’t-I couldn’t _do_ anything, I was just a little kid, I was just a kid, I couldn’t do anything, why did they all act like I could’ve done something? Why did _I_ think I could’ve done something against the-against Thawne?”

“Because you were brave, and scared, and didn’t want your Dad to go to prison for something I know now that he didn’t do. Because you were a good kid.” Joe rubs Barry’s back a little.

“I kept seeing it.” Barry squeezes his eyes tightly shut. “I kept seeing it, I kept watching him and that version of me fighting, over and over and over again, and then I was at school, and then-why do I have to remember _this_ episode? Why can’t I remember the other ones, the good ones, and then-and then just-just forget the ones like this?”

“I don’t know, Barry. I don’t know. Our minds do strange things sometimes.” Joe sighs.

“I hate it. I hate the slipping.” Barry starts crying. “I know I can’t control it and I know I shouldn’t hate it because it’s just-it’s just a part of me now, but I hate it. So much. I don’t want to see the timeline anymore. I’m a _scientist,_ I should know how to _fix_ this. I should know how to be normal.”

“You shouldn’t have to. Okay? If you don’t want to, then you shouldn’t have to, but I can’t fix it,” Joe says softly. “None of us can fix it, Barry. Not me, not you, not Caitlin. Not Cisco and Iris. And there’s no such thing as normal, kiddo. You know that better than anyone. This _is_ normal for us now. You don’t have to like it, and I know I don’t because I want you to be happy, but it’s how things are now.”

“I hate it. I hate it and I hate myself. Is that bad?” Barry’s lower lip trembles.

“Well, I don’t want you to hate yourself.” Joe frowns. “That’s bad. You can hate the episodes. I won’t stop you. But I think you should tell Iris and Cisco about hating yourself, okay? And maybe it’s time for you to start seeing a real therapist again.”

Barry sighs a little, burying his face in Joe’s shoulder. “I love you. You know that, right? I love you, and I love Iris, n’ Cisco, n’ Wally, n’-I know they wouldn’t want me to hate myself, but I _do._ Maybe I should see a therapist. But what would I even tell them? I can’t just walk into someone’s office and say ‘I have dissociative episodes of seeing the timestream because I was stuck in the speedforce for months because I’m the Flash’, can I?”

“We’ll figure it out,” Joe promises. He rubs his thumb in circles on Barry’s shoulder. “We’ll figure _something_ out. We always do.”


End file.
